This State of Almost Romance
by The Silver Feathered Raven
Summary: Days will stretch out into the future, and nothing will change because neither one will make the next step in this almost-romance. Spock/Uhura


The corridor outside is dark; she will leave in moments, slip outside into the darkness and make her way back to her dorm. The campus walkways outside will be well lit, muted orange-yellow lights that make sharpen the contrast of the shadows and dance across the planes and contours of her face as she hurries by. She will go into her room - no need to sneak; Gaila will still be out, no doubt in someone else's room; there will be no need to explain why she is in later than normal, no one to draw attention to this fact. Yes, she will go into her room and shut the door, and she will take off her clothes and her shoes and brush out her hair, and then she will fall asleep to wake the next day, alone, and she will go to class and respond to questions with correct answers.

Days will stretch out, and she will sit in the corner of his class and listen to him talk as she corrects the papers of the students; she will stay afterward and answer the questions those student have - and there will be many, students more eager to speak with a very human teaching aid than a seemingly fully Vulcan professor. She will discuss classroom work ethic and student progress with him over dinner, conversation straying from its course to touch on science and theory and language, and they will switch from dialect to dialect, from language to language, trying to trip the other up in what increasingly toes the line between academic discourse and an almost flirtatious dialogue. They will linger in restaurants long after they have run out of things relating to that day's class, and sometimes he will invite her to his quarters for dinner and they will talk for long hours while cups of tea cool between then, untouched.

They will sit across from one another, or side by side, always speaking, never touching, and it will be an awkward sort of courtship between two people with entirely different ideas of what courtship entails, with conflicting social norms that neither quite knows how to reconcile. And the relationship will rest in this state of almost-romance, with tension hanging between then and almost-touches and brushes of arms and legs that are always accidental and never turn into anything more. It will rest and stagnate and never become anything more, because neither will make that one attempt needed to bridge that seemingly immense gap.

She will leave in moments and the door will slide shut behind her, and nothing will change.

"You have forgotten your jacket, Nyota," he says, and she smiles just a little at the way he says her name. "If you will wait for a moment, I will retrieve it for you."

"Thank you, Spock," she says, quietly, and watches as he crosses the room and enters the kitchen, where her jacket is no doubt slung across the back of the chair she had sat in earlier. She takes a deep breath and thinks again of how she will leave the room as soon as he returns, how she will tell him that she will see him tomorrow and he will incline his head in affirmation. How she will walk out that door and listen to it hiss shut and click when it locks.

He returns within moments; perhaps thirty seconds gone. He passes her the jacket and she takes it, stiff red fabric coarse between her fingers. "Thank you," she says, then hands her data pads to him so that she can pull the jacket up her arms and over her shoulders; he takes them without question, holding them with long fingers that curve gently around them. She blinks and looks to the side. In only seconds she will leave and nothing will change.

"You will be safe walking back?" he asks her, as he always does, and she smiles at him, a small smile that curves the corners of her lips and lights up her eyes.

"Of course." She tugs on the collar of her jacket, pulling her hair out from where it has been caught by the fabric. "It is well lit, and it is a very short walk. Nothing that I can't handle."

"I did not mean to imply--"

She stops him with a smile and a hand to the data pads that he still grips, fingers only centimeters from his own. "I know, Spock."

There is a moment, then, where both of them hold the data pads, and it is like a breath caught between them, a jump-skip of heartbeats, and she thinks of the door behind her and his long fingers and discussions in restaurants and in kitchens, and cooling tea in white porcelain cups. She thinks _I can leave_, _now,_ and the moment shatters as she leans forwards, pushes herself up on tiptoes.

The data pads clatter to the floor between their feet.

His face turns at the last moment, just a little, and her lips press against his cheek, against only the corner of his mouth. The movement knocks her just a little off-balance; he catches at her hands, steadies her, fingers curling around one another. Their noses knock, skin against skin, and then there are inches between their faces. He does not release her hands.

"I am sorry," he says, and his eyes are slightly wider than normal, a slight green flush under the skin that covers his cheekbones. "Did you intend for that--" but he cannot complete his sentence, because she breaks in with her own words, her own apology, and she thinks that, yes, she has changed things, and not for the better, thinking that she has just messed things up spectacularly.

"Sorry," she says, a little breathlessly, and she bends her upper body away from him, retreating as much as she can with her hands still caught by his. It does not register that he has not let her go. "So sorry. I thought...never mind what I thought. It was...a stupid thought. An _illogical_ thought." She laughs a little at that, humorlessly. "It's late. I'll go now--"

"Nyota."

She stills, freezes as he brings their clasped hands up before them. There is something caught in her chest, a bird trapped beneath bone, and her breath is stoppered in her throat. She looks at his face as he looks to their hands. His thumbs trace her skin.

"It is not illogical," he says, after a moment has passed, after her fluttering heart has tried in vain to climb up her throat. "It seems all I can do is say things incorrectly tonight. I did not mean to imply...what I mean to say is that I was simply unprepared for...not that I was..." The sentences hang unfinished between them and he looks at her. "I have not participated in a kiss before," he says, and the air leaves her lungs in a rush.

"Oh," is all she says, and then, "are you prepared now?" There is a nervous smile on her face, in her words, and she waits for him to speak, waits with fingers still entwined with his.

"I believe I am," he says, and so she lets his hands drop for hers and reaches up to grip his shirt with one hand, the other settling lightly on the back of his neck, and she pushes herself up, and this time he does not turn his head, this time her lips press against his.

He is uncertain, she can tell, and his lips move against hers almost awkwardly. His fingers catch at the fabric on her jacket, not knowing what to do, how to hold her. It is a soft kiss, an unskilled kiss, an awkward kiss with bumping noses and teeth that scrape lightly against one another as his mouth opens slightly under hers. It is a teenager's kiss, the uncertain first steps into something that neither of them can quite comprehend. It is entirely unremarkable in every way, except that her heart leaps up in her chest and blood rushes to her face in a way that leaves her feeling lightheaded and dizzy, and she feels like she's sixteen again and receiving her very first kiss, except that this is _more_ than that, this catches her breath and pulls at her heart until she wonders if it's going to burst. His hands flatten against her back and pull her closer; she brings both hands up and slides them across his jaw, angling her face to his as she kisses him, as he kisses her, and she thinks that she's never had a kiss better than this.

She pulls back from him and he follows, like he can't bear to break the connection between them. When they finally break apart, it is as though the breath has been stolen from her lungs and she is only now able to steal it back. She looks at him, at the green flush of his cheeks and the dark, wide eyes that are so full of emotion to her that she wonders how no one else can ever read him.

"I...I should go," she says, but she doesn't want to. Her hands flutter from his face to his shoulders to the front of his shirt. "Class tomorrow. Late...I should be going."

"You should," he says, his voice soft, quiet, and he looks at her as though he is lost. His hands slide slowly from her back and she feels cold where the warmth of them is now absent.

"I will see you tomorrow," she says, and then kisses him again, softly, quickly, the brush of lips against lips, and then she pulls back, turns, her hands falling from him, and she is out the door before either of them can say or do anything more. She is already partway down the hall by the time the door has hissed shut.

It is not until much later, after her cheeks have stopped burning and her heart has stopped racing, that she realizes that her data pads are still scattered across his floor.

* * *

A/N: Originally posted over at my livejournal, which I believe is linked on my profile. And _wow_, I hadn't noticed the word count on this until now. I hadn't realized it was this long!

Thank you for reading! Critique is always welcome, as well as pointing out if there are any spelling errors.


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